A Handful of Liesby Minx

The Adobe Inn, Arroyo Seco, New Mexico

1994

Dean stared down at the page of intricate Latin. Latin. He kept staring, until his eyes began to water and the words began to blur together into indistinct, fuzzy black marks against the yellowed page. He sucked at Latin. And he hated reading. Well, not totally true, he thought with a bemused smirk. Because if the reading material had a car or half-naked chick on the cover? Then Dean would read that baby from start to finish, but this book only had more Latin written on its cover - in big, gold intricate letters, no less. He really hated Latin. It was a dead language for a reason.

“Ooh, Latin! Cool!” Sam piped up behind Dean, and Dean couldn’t help letting out a smug chuckle at his little brother’s extreme nerdiness.

“What?” Sam frowned.

“You would think this is cool,” Dean said, his sarcasm evident as he indicated the ancient tome on his lap. He looked at Sam with a modicum of teenaged disgust and shook his head. “If you were a few years older, you’d be the one having to memorize this crap instead of me.”

“It’s not crap, Dean,” Sam said as he took a seat beside his brother on the motel bed. He leaned over to study the page Dean had been trying to memorize for the past forty-five minutes. “It’s a binding spell for a…” Sam’s eyebrows scrunched together and the tip of his tongue peeked out from between his lips as he tried to figure out the word. “…for a nahuales.” Sam gazed up at Dean, looking for clarification. “What’s that?”

Dean grinned. “They’re ginormous, bad-ass shapeshifters that’ve been around since the Spanish Inquisition.” Dean shut the book and tossed it aside, giving it a long-suffering glower before turning back to Sam. “S’posed to be the watchdogs for some Aztec war god or something. Anyways, Dad and me are gonna hunt one of ‘em down tonight,” he explained excitedly to Sam.

A stony pout replaced the worry on Sam’s face as he realized he would be spending another long evening alone in the motel room, waiting nervously for his brother and father to return unharmed.

“How come I never get to go?” he whined.

“Too green yet, squirt,” Dean replied.

It had been less than two years since Sam had found their Dad’s hunting journal and learned the truth about what their family really did for a living. Dean ruffled Sam’s hair, much to the younger boy’s dislike and slid off the bed, heading for the door. “Don’t worry, Sammy, there’ll be plenty of hunts for you to go on down the road. The bad guys aren’t planning on giving up anytime soon. At least not that I can tell,” Dean stated with a nonchalant shrug.

“You sound like Dad,” Sam huffed sullenly. He picked up the book Dean had discarded. “So, you reading this for the hunt?” he asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. “I’m s’posed to memorize some hokey incantation in there for tonight,” he said. “Dad says we probably won’t even need to use it but just in case the thing pins one of us down, we can use the spell to bind it.” Sam nodded, impressed, and began paging through the book with interest. Dean just shook his head again. “Hey, I’m going to make a run to the soda machine, you want anything?” he asked as he reached for the doorknob.

Sam, his nose buried deep in the Latin book, offered a muffled answer that floated out over the top of the tome. “Um, root beer if they have it. Or –“

“Yeah I know, Mountain Dew if they don’t,” Dean finished Sam’s sentence with a knowing smile. It was a litany the two boys had exchanged numerous times over the years. “Be back in a sec,” Dean advised and then he was out the door, leaving Sam happily poring over the incantations in the dusty old spell book.

Sam spent most of the afternoon reading through the pages of spells, lore and ancient history contained in the book, fascinated by the stories of the Aztec gods and the Spanish Inquisition’s attempt to eradicate the war gods as well as the shapeshifters the gods had created to guard and protect them.

Sam would have felt guilty about hogging the book for so long, except that Dean didn’t seem to mind. In fact, his brother appeared more interested in what was on the television than what was in the spell book. Closing the book, Sam turned on the bed to study his brother.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on that spell thing?” Sam asked Dean casually.

Dean ignored him, reaching for the half-empty bag of family-size potato chips nestled between them on the bed, his attention focused on the sci-fi movie playing on the beat up TV set sitting on the dresser across from them.

“Dean,” Sam tried again.

“Hm?” Dean finally looked over at Sam as a commercial came on. “What?” He stuffed a handful of chips into his mouth and chewed loudly.

Sam waved the hefty spell book under Dean’s nose, a look of almost parental accusation on his face. “The spell? Aren’t you supposed to be learning it for tonight?”

Dean’s face darkened. “Yeah, ‘kay, thanks there, Jiminy Cricket,” Dean retorted, smacking the book away with a mild glare. “I’ll do it after the movie’s over,” he promised. “It won’t take that long, and I wanna see the ending of this flick, so zip it.”

Sam sighed and set the book back on the bed, giving it an apologetic look as if saying he gave it his best shot. Dean’s attention was back on the space battle on the TV screen, so Sam hopped off the bed and wandered over to window, pulling the curtain aside slightly to peer out the dirt-streaked window at the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. He wondered when his father would be back and whether or not he’d bring them dinner. Sam’s stomach rumbled as if in affirmation of that hope.

****

“Dean, what the hell are you doing in there?” John asked in rising irritation as he zipped shut the duffle full of weapons and other hunting paraphernalia. He glanced over to the closed bathroom door, his mouth set in a grim line of impatience. “Let’s get a move on, boy!” he barked.

“Just gimme a sec!” Dean hollered back. He bit his lip in feverish concentration as he continued to jot down the Latin binding spell onto the palm of his left hand. “No different from school,” he muttered to himself as his eyes flicked between the spell book propped against the bathroom counter and his inked up palm. “Hey, got a B in history this way…no reason it can’t work here too.” Dean knew he should have spent more time, more honest effort, actually memorizing the spell, but hell, he thought. He was a man of action, not words.

Just as John was getting ready to pound on the bathroom door, Dean flung it open, an over bright smile on his young face. John chalked it up to nerves and jerked his head towards the motel room door. “Let’s go. We’ve only got a small window of time to hunt down and smoke this thing tonight. You got that spell down?” he questioned.

“I’m on top of it,” Dean affirmed, careful to keep his left palm facing inward, away from view. He grabbed the duffle bag from his dad’s hands, slinging it over his own shoulder with a cocky grin as he sauntered out the door ahead of John.

John stopped at the open door, turning to offer Sam a tender smile. “You be good, Sammy,” he said. “You know the drill, bud. Stay inside, doors and windows locked and salted. We’ll call you from the road to let you know we’re on our way back.”

Sam nodded from his perch on the bed. “I know, Dad. I got it.”

“I know you do,” John reassured him. He pointed a finger at his youngest, giving Sam a warning look. “No more soda tonight, dude. I don’t want you wired all night long. Got it?”

“Yessir,” Sam agreed and then John was out the door.

Sam wandered into the bathroom, and was surprised to see the Latin spell book laying atop the closed toilet seat lid. He picked it up, puzzled, and carried it back into the bedroom, flopping down on the bed with it to read some more.

****

Dean stopped to wipe the sweat from his eyes, blinking rapidly a few times to wash the sting of it away. He was breathing hard, bent over, hands on knees as he tried to gather another lungful of air into his overworked body. The nahuales had been waiting for them. Freaking waiting for them! Like it had figured out it was being hunted and had decided to go on the offense instead of running away like any good little supernatural creature would have done. To make matters worse, the shapeshifting bastard had managed to split up him and his father and had decided Dean was the more interesting of the two to go after.

“Figures,” Dean gasped under his breath as he straightened back up, taking a moment to scout his surroundings. “Gotta get a ‘shifter that has a hard on for handsome bad-asses like me.”

Something rustled in the thick undergrowth off to his left and Dean froze instantly. He carefully studied the cluster of mesquite bushes in that direction, and nearly stopped breathing when a set of reddish eyes blinked back at him from the tangle of thorns and twigs. The nahuales, deciding not wait for an engraved invitation, crept out of the shadows of its hiding place, and slowly edged towards Dean, morphing as it went from a mid-sized coyote on four legs into a dark-furred two-legged half-man, half-wolf creature, it’s fangs and claws glinting in the moonlight.

“Shit,” Dean muttered and slowly brought his shotgun up at the same time he opened the palm of his hand to recite the Latin incantation from it. “In nomen de omni….omnipotens…” Dean faltered. He squinted down at his dirt-encrusted hand in the growing darkness, trying without luck to decipher the rest of the words, but the ink had partly smeared and rubbed off his sweaty palm. He glanced up at the towering shapeshifter slowly advancing on him and took a shaky step backward only to be brought up short by the pinon tree directly behind him.

While Dean’s voice was loud and angry, it had a noticable quaver to it now. “In nomen de omnipotens Deus…” he sucked in a breath, eyed the creature now a yard from him and swallowed hard, staring down at his shaking hand. “fallo demone, ego…ego something, something…fuck!” he spat out in aggravation. The rest of the spell was illegible.

The creature smiled, and Dean felt a chill shiver up his spine. It knew. It knew Dean didn’t have the spell to bind it. Dean gave up on the Latin and swung the shotgun up instead, hoping to at least slow the thing down with a load of rock salt, but it was too late. The nahuales was too close. It knocked the shotgun from Dean’s hands with one huge, hairy paw. The shapeshifter growled low and reached for Dean but stopped, clearly startled, as John’s voice rang out from the nearby tree-line.

With a shriek, the nahuales attempted to lunge forward once more, it jaws snapping only inches from Dean’s face, spittle flying, but the spell had stopped it in its tracks, quelling its advance upon the very pale, very shaken teenager. John finished reciting the rest of the incantation, and the nahaules’ plaintive snarls came from behind motionless lips, the rest of its body going stiff as if frozen solid.

“Dean! Move!” John bellowed and Dean needed no further instructions. He immediately threw himself to the right, tucking and rolling as the loud report of his father’s .45 echoed off the walls of the canyon around them.

John emptied his gun into the creature. The shapeshifter jerked spastically as if suffering an epileptic fit, as the wrought iron rounds pierced its broad, hairy back in a tight circular pattern, a tribute to John’s marksmanship. It bellowed in pain before toppling over, hitting the ground with a solid thunk.

Dean rose up onto his knees, ignoring the pine needles jabbing him through his jeans and stared in awe at the nahuales’ bullet-riddled body directly in front of him. His eyes slowly panned up from the still creature to his father.

John shook the spent bullet casings from his revolver into the palm of his hand, depositing them into his jacket pocket for later disposal. Yanking a speedloader from the same pocket he’d dropped the casings in, he quickly reloaded the .45, his eyes never leaving the shapeshifter’s form. Despite appearances, John knew from experience that even though something seemed dead, it didn’t necessarily mean that it would stay that way, especially if said thing was supernatural in origin.

“Dean, you okay?” John called over to his son as he prodded the nahuales with the toe of his boot.

Convinced the nahaules was indeed dead, John slid his revolver into the waistband of his jeans and fixed Dean with a particularly hard stare, his brows furrowing deeply. “What the hell happened back there?” he questioned.

Dean opened his mouth and then just as quickly shut it.

John stalked over to Dean, who was still crouching on the ground. “Why didn’t you use the binding spell on it, son?” John demanded as he reached down a hand for Dean to grab. John pulled Dean up from the ground, his eyes still on the teen, waiting for an answer to his question.

Dean flushed deeply, thankful for the darkness and its cover. He looked up at his father and sighed deeply, feeling utterly stupid.

“I, um…I tried, Dad, but uh…”

“But what, Dean?” John was obviously irritated and he shot Dean a warning look.

There was no easy way out of this one, Dean somberly realized. He held up his ink-smeared hand, palm outward, towards John. “The spell sorta came off my hand, where I copied it…so I, uh, I couldn’t read all of it…” Dean stopped and winced. Boy did that sound lame, he thought.

John apparently thought so too because he stared at Dean’s raised hand in disbelief. John grabbed the offered palm and held it up to the bright moonlight. He had to peer closely but could just make out the dark, illegible tracks covering his son’s palm.

“Sonofabitch,” John growled and dropped Dean’s hand in disgust.

Dean choked when he felt his dad latch onto his bicep with an iron grip. John pulled Dean close until they were nose to nose.

“Are you saying you didn’t memorize the spell, Dean?” John asked, his voice positively glacial in tone. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You know I suck at Latin,” Dean admitted weakly, hoping to lighten the situation with a bit of humor. He actually squeaked when he felt his dad’s right hand land a half dozen solid swats to his butt, leaving behind a stinging warmth that made Dean wince. “I thought it’d be okay if I cribbed the spell, you know, like school notes…” Dean hastily explained but shut up at the malevolent glare his dad leveled at him.

“You could have been killed,” John stated coldly, his fingers tightening around Dean’s arm. He turned and started out of the canyon, Dean in tow.

“That shifter would’ve killed you Dean, torn you limb from limb, stripped the flesh right off your bones. And then, it would’ve taken your life force and enslaved it!” John stopped, swinging Dean around hard by the arm to face him. “Do you understand? Do you have any idea? You’d have been nothing more than a disembodied spirit for all eternity, forced to do that thing’s bidding!”

Dean stared in horror at his father, his tingling backside momentarily forgotten. John’s eyes went flat, his mouth thinning into a grim white line.

“You didn’t read any of the stuff I gave you this morning, did you?” John accused, giving his son’s arm a rough shake. “Not one goddamned word! Why did you tell me you were ready for tonight then? Why didn’t you say something? What the hell were you doing all damn day while I was out scouting, Dean?”

Dean stared at the dusty ground, too ashamed to face his dad’s questioning gaze. “I guess I didn’t want to miss the hunt and I knew you wouldn’t let me go if I sounded like I wasn’t prepared.”

“Damn straight!” John barked, shaking Dean again. “Jesus Christ, this isn’t a game, Dean! These hunts are dangerous, life threatening, and you know that! I expect you to give me an honest evaluation of your readiness for that very reason!”

“I know,” Dean muttered.

“Really?” John shot back acidly as he started off again for the Impala, dragging Dean behind him. “Because you just showed me the opposite tonight.”

The rest of the walk was made in silence. They reached the car a few minutes later, and John let go of Dean’s arm, giving the teen a shove towards the vehicle.

“Get your butt in the car and wait for me,” John ordered, pointing at the Impala. “I need to go salt and burn the body.”

Dean hastily complied, settling himself into the front passenger seat of the car while John stalked off back the way they’d come.

While it was true that the nahuales’ corpse needed to be disposed of, John also needed the time to cool off. He was too angry right now to deal with Dean and he knew it. He reached up with a shaky hand to swipe at the tears threatening to spill from his eyes and took several deep cleansing breaths. He was way too angry. And scared shitless.

****

Dean glanced up a half hour later to spy his dad making his way through the scrub brush back to the car. John didn’t head for the driver’s side though. Instead he crossed in front of the Impala and over to Dean’s door, opening it with a determined yank. He fixed Dean with a hard, stern glare and then reached down and pulled the boy from the car.

“I want you bent over the trunk, pants down,” John ordered as his hands slid down to his waist to his belt buckle. Dean’s mouth went dry. John undid his belt and began to slide it from the loops in his jeans. “And I don’t want to hear a word out of your mouth, Dean, do you hear me? Not. One. Word.”

Dean nodded once, understanding the gravity of the situation, and slowly trudged over to the back of the Impala, undoing his jeans along the way.

Dean shoved his pants and briefs down to his knees, his flesh stippling from the cool desert air, and carefully positioned himself across the car’s trunk, forehead dipped low, almost touching the glossy black metal. He heard his father step up behind him and he gave an involuntary flinch before taking a deep breath and steadying himself.

Dean knew his dad wasn’t going to go easy on him. Didn’t expect him too. Not for something this bad. He remained silent, per his father’s orders, knowing this was definitely not the time to come out with a smart-aleck remark, especially not if he wanted to keep any of the skin on his ass intact.

John didn’t waste any time explaining or lecturing. He drew his arm back and then brought it forward and down. The belt sliced across Dean’s naked flanks with a forceful, angry smack. Dean sucked in a loud, sharp breath between his clenched teeth, eyes squeezing shut, but he remained in position.

“What you did tonight was inexcusable, Dean,” John stated firmly. He swung his belt down again, the leather catching Dean across the lower half of his rear end, sending a trail of fire all along the crease between the teen’s thighs and butt cheeks. “You blew off your half of the work for this hunt and then you lied to me about it.” John brought his belt down across Dean’s reddened butt three times in a row, hard, to emphasize the point. “Lied. To. Me.”

Dean hissed again, eyes tearing up from the pain as well as the load of guilt he felt at letting his father down. John didn’t say another word as he cracked his belt down over and over, the loud smacks a harsh contrast to the stillness of the desert around the two of them. Dean began to squirm and yelp as the heavy leather strap left stripe after searing stripe of bright pain all across his butt and upper thighs. He couldn’t help it. It really hurt.

John didn’t stop. He continued to apply his belt to Dean’s backside, turning it a deep crimson shade.

“You could have died tonight, Dean,” John growled, his emotions spilling over into his voice, causing it to break a little. “How do you think that makes me feel, knowing I could have lost you because you lied about being ready for this? How d’you think I’d feel having to haul your lifeless body back to Sammy and tell him his big brother was dead? Or what if it’d been me, Dean? What if I’d bit it back there because of your lie? You and Sammy’d be orphans right now. No family. No home. Farmed out by CPS to a bunch of strangers to raise. And chances are you’d never see each other again.”

Dean choked at that, the noise culminating into a loud ragged sob as the full impact of what might have happened hit Dean hard in the gut. His forehead hit the trunk as he began to cry, snot and tears mixing on his anguished face.

John laid down one last lick, this one full force, leaving a thick welt across the dead center of Dean’s ass, and Dean howled loudly, his voice cracking, his back arching in pain at the red-hot sting. He went still across the Impala’s trunk, save for the sobs shaking his shoulders and chest.

“Get your pants up, son. We’re done here,” John said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He began to thread his belt back into the loops on his jeans as Dean very slowly and stiffly bent down to retrieve his pants, which had fallen down around his ankles during the whipping.

Dean couldn’t stifle a moan of pain when he pulled his jeans and briefs up past his throbbing butt, the fabric rasping agonizingly across the raw, spanked skin. He quickly zipped up, then wiped the snot off his face onto the front of his t-shirt, vision a blur from the tears that were still falling. Turning, Dean took a shaky step towards the front of the car only to be stopped by his father’s hands, now gentle, on his neck and shoulder.

“C’mere,” John said with a tenderness that belied his gruff exterior. He tugged Dean backwards, turning him at the same time so that he could pull his child into his embrace, wrapping Dean tightly in his arms, cradling Dean’s head to his chest. Dean sobbed harder.

“Shhh,” John crooned, his whiskey-warm voice having a calming effect on his boy as John held him, kneading Dean’s hot, sweaty neck. “It’s okay, Dean. Shhh. Calm down. C’mon, bud. You paid for your mistake and it’s over now. You’re okay. I’m not mad at you anymore. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Dean settled, his face buried into the front of his dad’s shirt, the familiar smell of his dad’s salty sweat and Old Spice cologne helping to calm him. John just held his son tight, letting Dean know he was forgiven and safe.

“You may think my rules are arbitrary or even stupid sometimes, Dean,” John spoke softly into his son’s ear, his breath warm on Dean’s temple. “But I still expect you to follow them regardless. I need to be able to trust you implicitly when we’re out on a job, bud. I need to know you’ve got my back, just like you know I’ve always got yours and Sammy’s. There’s got to be that trust there, Dean, or I can’t have you out here with me. You understand what I’m saying?”

Dean nodded against his father’s chest. “Yessir,” he mumbled.

“Good,” John gave a tentative smile before continuing. “It upset me more to know that you lied to me, son, than the fact that you hadn’t really prepared for this hunt like you should’ve. No more hunts for you until you can show me again that I can trust you.”

Dean squirmed and John took that as an acknowledgement from the teen of what he’d just said, albeit a reluctant one. John pulled Dean’s head away from his chest, cradling it in his palms, forcing Dean to look up at him. “Don’t you ever lie to me again about something this important,” John scolded, his eyes hard and unwavering. “I mean it, Dean. Never again.”

“I won’t. I swear,” Dean readily agreed.

John’s face softened a bit. He reached up to tousle Dean’s short, brush-cut hair. “Good,” he said. “Then let’s head back to the motel. I’m sure Sam’s climbing the walls about now, waiting to hear from us.”

Dean gave his father a watery smile and nodded. “Sounds good,” he said as he let his dad lead him around to the passenger side of the car.

Dean stopped short though, a look of dismay crossing his tear-stained face. He shot John a pained expression as he reached back to rub his hot, tender behind. “Um, Dad?”

“Yeah, kiddo?” John replied, quirking a brow at his son.

“Not to make a chauffeur out of you or anything, but uh, can I ride in the back seat?”

John grinned, his teeth white in the moonlight. He made a mock bow towards Dean and then opened the back door to the Impala, waving Dean inside. Dean crawled in to lay on his side across the leather seat, careful to keep his butt clear. He gave his father a disarming grin.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Enjoy the reprieve, son,” John commented dryly. “’Cause when we get back to the room, you’re gonna be sitting down at the table to copy that Latin incantation from the spell book fifty times, verbatim – diagrams and all - before you hit the sack. And tomorrow, you’ll memorize it and repeat it back to me until I’m satisfied you know it by heart and can recite it without thinking.”

John shut the car door on Dean’s groan of consternation, smiling to himself. He knew it would be a long time before his oldest child would ever again look at lying as a means to an end. And he’d driven home the seriousness of what it meant to be a hunter, the importance of having integrity with both oneself and others, if you wanted to live to a ripe old age.